Interview: All About All-Star Baseball 2003

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By IGN Staff

Last year, Acclaim's All-Star Baseball 2002 failed to impress on the PS2 or GameCube. Serious AI problems put a crimp in ASB's previous dominance in the baseball wars. For those not in the know, the ASB series on the N64 was widely regarded as one of the best baseball franchises to ever lace up its cleats. Hearing the criticism of a once shining franchise, PJ Snavely set out to make sure Acclaim's latest version of America's pastime is a home run and not a foul ball. He sat down to talk to IGN about the new game (which should be released at the end of February). PJ gives the full scoop on what to expect of the new ASB, including a look at some new features sure to please die-hard fans.

IGN: Did you set any goals for yourself on what you wanted to accomplish with ASB 2003?

PJ Snavely: Well, 2003 was our main focus since the beginning. After we were handed the project after the N64 days and told it was going to be on all three platforms in 2003, this [installment of the] game was always our focus to be the best one out there. I think we've hit that so we're pretty happy.

IGN: The problem most people had with ASB last year was with the AI. Did you focus on that to make sure those AI glitches weren't as evident or even there anymore?

PJ: Absolutely. Our AI guy was dedicated to squashing everything that he saw. He took it as a personal reflection on himself every time he saw comments like that. He's his worst critic.

IGN: The Player Card feature you added is really interesting. It works somewhat like Madden where you get points for doing certain feats. Do you unlock things when you get certain cards?

PJ: Right. I played Madden until I got every single player card and that took so long it got really frustrating. So we wanted to make sure that every card had an equal frequency. Just to make sure you had just as much chance of getting a cheat stadium as you did getting a regular playing card. That was our goal with them. Above and beyond that, I think we have 21 different cheats. All those are unlocked by getting the various combinations of the development player cards. It's up to the user to figure out what combinations they've unlocked and to see what cheats they've enabled after they're done.

IGN: What are some of the cheats you can unlock?

PJ: Some of the standard ones you've always seen [like] big heads. Aluminum bats, stickball bats, brooms for bats. Maximum height, maximum weight. Minimum height, minimum weight. I love different things that we do with the player models just to give the user a different feel.

IGN: There aren't any hidden Hall of Fame players outside the ones you find in the Hall of Fame team, are there?

PJ: Our Cooperstown license covers about 50 different players from the Hall of Fame. We've taken the best 25 and put them in the Hall of Fame team that's accessible right at the beginning. We've got two other Hall of Fame teams that are AL and NL Hall of Fame teams. They have some of those players on each team and then some more Cooperstown players as well.

IGN: And the AL and NL Cooperstown teams are ones that you unlock with the Player Cards, correct?

PJ: Yeah, there are seven cheat teams, I believe, that are unlocked with cards. Including our development team and then a couple (laughs), a couple of teams we made in tribute to some of our competitors.

IGN: Can you give us an example of one of those?

PJ: I'll have to let you unlock them for yourself. There's two teams in there and I think they're fairly obvious who they're tributes to.

IGN: How do you think ASB 2003 will stand up against Triple Play and High Heat?

PJ: I think, realistically, no game can touch us in terms of features? Our goal was always to make sure we had the playability and replayability that people wanted. And I think we've got that this year. So, I don't think anybody's gonna touch us.

IGN: Are you only going to be able to have a 162 game unbalanced schedule in the Franchise mode?

PJ: Yeah, that was as designed. Because, some of the irregularities we had with the 81 game schedules and the round robin schedules really weren't performing the way we wanted it to in terms of player evaluation and aging process and stuff like that. So, for us, it was more of a design decision than anything else.

[Editor's note: You can adjust the number of games in Season mode, but not Franchise mode.]

IGN: When you finish your first season in Franchise mode, what happens?

PJ: Once you're done with the season it brings you to an off season menu. From there you can do anything as far as view all the players that have retired during the season. You can take a look at what your franchise value is, what your budget's like, what free agents you can sign, who made the Hall of Fame during that off season.

IGN: Is there a Hall of Fame list you can look at say, three seasons down the line and see who's made the Hall of Fame throughout your franchise?

PJ: No, that's something I wanted to add but we just ran out of time.

IGN: So maybe next year?

PJ: I'm hoping next year to go above and beyond that. We've got some ideas we want to play with.

IGN: Any that you want to share with us?

PJ: (long pause) Maybe not yet. Maybe once we get a little more ways down the road and our competitors can't copy it, I'll take the cat out of the bag.

IGN: Most baseball games have a tendency to get delayed and come out a little late in the season. This year everyone seems to be trying to get their games out during spring training. Was that a marketing decision, you thought it would sell better if you got it out early?

PJ: I think so. Especially since the baseball field is so different from the football field. There's a clear winner in the football field every season, although that's becoming a little more muddled now. But, for baseball, the field's really wide open. I mean, nobody was really impressed with any of last years efforts so we want to make sure that not only is ours the best, but it's up there as quickly as possible.

IGN: Is the final build going to have every player, because my A's were missing Corey Lidle?

PJ: We have everybody that we have the rights to from the Players Association in there. I believe Corey is not a member of the Major League Baseball Players Association. [Editor's note: Lidle was a replacement player during the 1994-95 strike and therefore is not allowed in the Players Association.]

IGN: Oh, well, how foolish of him.

PJ: Most of them are trying to get back in. That's the issue in baseball games. What do you do with those guys? Do you make up a name and put a similar guy out there or do you just put somebody else on the roster that's a real player?

IGN: When you come up with a player's ability in the game, do you base it off their career or off of last season?

PJ: It really depends on the player. A guy like Bret Boone, for example, he had his career year last year. So, if we based his stats off last year, it would be over inflated. We take a three-year average for guys like him. But for guys that have, basically, put up the same type of numbers over the past three years, or who don't have a good representative three years of stats, we use the last season. Of course, a lot of those are hand-edited as well to make sure that the control ratings look right, accuracy, velocity that kind of thing for pitchers.

IGN: How deep is stat tracking in All-Star Baseball?

PJ: It's as deep as you would see on a site like ESPN.com.

IGN: With the Franchise mode, will the previous seasons stats add to their career totals?

PJ: Yeah, in the off season menu there's a section called Career Records that keeps track of career records and single season records. So if you want to sim 20 seasons and then once you're done with 20 seasons, go back and look at who set maybe the career record for runs or the single season record for hits, you can go back and look at that. And it will give you the year as well as the team that they did it with.

IGN: In the Franchise mode it seems like there are an awful lot of trades that happen. Was that something else you wanted to do to try and simulate realistic baseball?

PJ: Yeah, basically, the computer GMs will try and make their teams better. Just the same way that real GMs do. You know, based on how many years they have left on their contract, how injury prone they are, their age, their overall ability, that sort of thing.

IGN: We had recently done a feature on the Expansion mode in ASB 2003. We had stated that you could not play an expansion team in the Franchise mode. Is that incorrect?

PJ: That is incorrect, actually.

IGN: And that's for Xbox, PS2, and GameCube?

PJ: Yeah. For us it doesn't make any sense not to do it. But the expansion team during its first year is painful to play.

IGN: Is there any difference with ASB between the three systems?

PJ: There's some things outside of graphics. There's a couple of special saves we added just to make sure every mode was compatible with the Memory Card 59 on the GameCube.

IGN: You have three commentators in this game, correct?

PJ: Yes.

IGN: How do you go about getting the talent and then laying down the different tracks?

PJ: Actually, it's a pretty lengthy process. We've got a designer that's entirely devoted to audio. So, over the course of this season, like for next year, he's going to prepare new scripts for [Bob] Brenly, [Thom] Brennaman, and [Steve "Psycho"] Lyons. And that's all he does is listen to tapes from their games and basically make a script for them. And then the actual recording process only takes three to five days per person. But then the editing is another two to three weeks on top of that per person.

IGN: Did you make a large series of tracks so there isn't a lot of repetition?

PJ: Yeah, there's an extreme variety for our two main guys, which are Lyons and Brennaman. And then for Brenly we basically just wanted him to do some stadium analysis [and] things like that for Home Run Derby. So that's what we ended up getting with him. His schedule was fairly limited, uh, he had to squeeze us in between visits to the White House. So it was tough for him.

IGN: Are there going to be an umpire voices calling balls and strikes?

PJ: No, it's something that we tried to do. It's one of those things where, do you want to make it TV-style or do you want to make the user feel like he's sitting behind home plate? We try and convey more of a TV-style presentation where you don't really hear that. You'll hear maybe a little bit of the hecklers in the crowd kind of thing, but your main focus is on sound effects and on announcer voices.

IGN: There are passed balls now in the game and broken bats. Are there any other little surprises that we might see in this game that we didn't see last year?

PJ: Um, let me think. I've gotten so used to seeing everything now that I'm not sure what people are gonna be surprised by. The expansion mascots are pretty cool. Those are different. Something that you'll see occasionally that I think took me by surprise was when a player caught a pop foul by the stands, as he was running towards the dugout he tossed the ball into the stands. Little stuff like that. More of the same.

IGN: There's not gonna be any contraction in your game?

PJ: (laughs) No, I don't think Major League Baseball's gonna approve of that. Though, if [the owners] do it next year, they have to allow us to do it in some way, shape, or form.

IGN: There was one thing that I was really surprised to see. I plunked Rafael Palmeiro and he charged the mound. Will the MLB allow that?

PJ: They don't mind players charging the mound, but they shy away from any sort of physical contact.

IGN: Which is why it cuts before the player gets to the mound?

PJ: Yeah, rather than do some sort of friendship animation when they get out there. We decided against the blatant Mortal Kombat reference.

IGN: Do you know what the ship date is going to be for ASB?

PJ: The end of this month for all three platforms. With any luck, anyway.